Working in a lab can be stressful, there is so much to do, and so little time to do it that we often feel overwhelmed. Sometimes you come into the lab and there are 15 experiments that just need to be done, so you throw on some music and start doing a bunch of them at once. Pretty soon you have one in the centrifuge, one in the water bath, and another in a different centrifuge all while you are making new solutions. Then you take the first experiment out of the centrifuge and can’t remember which wash step you were on. Sound familiar? There is just so much to do that we assume the only way to get it all done is to do it all at once.

So what is multitasking in a lab?

The key to getting multiple things done in the lab is to first realize that the more things you are doing at once, the less efficient you will be; and this includes things other than the experiments. If you are listening to a podcast or music while pipetting, or carrying on a conversation with your lab mate while plating cells, you are multitasking. For most routine experiments, this is probably fine as you won’t need complete focus to seed your cells, however, for the more difficult or complicated protocols it may be best to take out the headphones to give your work your undivided attention. The key here is to decide what concessions of efficiency you are willing to make.

The key to multitasking in a lab is to understand how to take advantage of stop times during your experiments. I was talking to a colleague about multitasking in the lab the other day and he made the comment, “I think of multitasking as stacking shorter tasks within longer ones and saying that I am technically doing several things at once even though I may be focusing on just one thing at a time”.

While this may seem like an easy concept it is very much a learned skill that you have to master. The hardest part is training yourself to only focus on one task at a time, and to only take on two tasks if the other can be completely abandoned for a good chunk of time. In general, a 5 minute incubation does not lend itself to another experiment, however a 1 hour incubation is a whole different story! For example, one of the main protocols I perform in the lab calls for a 55 minute incubation – this is the perfect time for me to perform a DNA extraction as it will be completely done by the time my 55 minute incubation is over.

In Adobe I have a ‘Clients name’, when I enter this name it automatically populates two fields which are required. I also have a third column but sometimes isn’t required. How do I get the ‘Clients name’ to appear when required without re-typing? Is there a script for example if I click ‘Coloumn3’ the clients name will appear?

New to Acrobat DC Pro and JavaScript. Have programmed with other languages extensively years ago, mainly database systems design. Lots of Vbe, and SQL.

I have a form that I am converting to fillable and want to assign the value of a date formatted field(MM) with the value from another date formatted field(MM) – seems that when you prepare the form, and the original designer of the form placed text like Date:_____/_____/_____ on the form, you get three separate field there. Lets call field1 Date_month, field2 Date_day, and field3 Date_year. Each field gets formatted as a date field with wither mm, dd, or yyyy with the character places limited accordingly.

I place an onBlur Action JavaScript similar to the following code for each field..:

I don't know that it's true to say that a closed-garden Wave would kill it. Sure, it would be easier to integrate if it DOES work with already-existing SMTP/POP email, but I don't think it will die if it doesn't. After all, IM grew out of essentially nothing despite being also completely cut-off from email. And what Google's got is MUCH bigger than IM.

I don't think it does. Sure, it might take a while to work out all of the ways you can maximise the use of it, but getting up and running should be easy. Wave seems to have a low entry level but then also seems to be full of surprises the more you use it. That's great technology.

Just to say – if anyone wants to get into GWT and you're not a Java developer, I'd recommend giving "Grails":http://www.grails.org/ a go and using the "GWT plugin for Grails":http://www.grails.org/GWT+Plugin

Grails makes writing the services much easier, although you still have to wrestle with Java for the GWT bit, every bit of help you can get is worth it.

Agree Mike, seen too much vaporware in my time, and jumping to conclusions. “Talk is cheap” – I will wait for the goods to arrive and see it perform under real live uses before piling on accolades of it taking over the Internet.